


Empty Vessel

by JenevaJensen



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, Goodbyes, Inspired by Game of Thrones, Missing Scene, One Shot, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-12 06:19:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19126327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenevaJensen/pseuds/JenevaJensen
Summary: Arya makes certain that Gendry is clear about where they stand before she sails away from King's Landing.





	Empty Vessel

Arya had entered the Dragon Pit with a single-minded mission: get Jon back and then this world of Seven Hells could be rebuilt. Or not. It wouldn’t be her problem. After the speechifying and kingmaking, after Jon was released and she’d hugged him goodbye, there was only one person left in all of Westeros that she still needed to properly wish farewell.

Gendry was sitting in a tavern with a tankard of ale when she appeared across the table from him. “I doubted you would actually show,” he remarked, eyeing her warily.

She sat and poured herself a goblet of water. “How much have you had?” she asked nodding at his half-full cup.

“What you see,” he replied. What type of meeting was this going to be? They were surrounded by people but the room felt suddenly very empty and his new clothes very tight. He took a small sip from his cup and offered, “I wasn’t sure you were ever going to talk to me again at all. You didn’t seem to want to, earlier.”

“In front of all those preening Lordlings? I was trying to be considerate,” she said, “Of your feelings.”

He snorted into his drink at that, but caught the flash of her eyes on him over the rim of his cup. He swallowed and set it down. “Why did you leave Winterfell so quickly? You were home. It was my place to leave…after.”

“I had things to do.”

“With The Hound.”

She nodded.

A guilty look shadowed his face and he ducked his head, rubbing one hand over his scalp, down over his eyes and across the stubble on his chin, “Because of what I said that night?” He’d told her she was beautiful. That he loved her. That he wanted her to be with him. To be his wife. The Lady of Storm’s End. That it all wouldn’t mean anything without her. He’d also said something daft about forks.

She met his eyes, always fearless. “No. I was always going to go. It’s not… home… any longer.”

“Your list?”

She waved that away, “Ash and snow. No names.” He looked relieved; a part of him had been afraid that he’d put himself on her list.

He _had_ , just not _that_ list. At least she hoped he’d be on the new list once they’d had this conversation. She reached over, covering his hand resting on the table with one of her own. His eyes flashed upwards in surprise. She removed her hand. She didn’t want to give him the wrong idea. She peered around at the crowded tables of citizenry carousing. She was bad at this and this tavern was not where she wanted to be. Gendry read her expression and finished his drink, throwing some coins on the table for payment. Suddenly, they were in the street; they’d always done better on the road. Arya set the pace and direction and soon they were meandering toward the wharf.

After several minutes of silent walking she asked, “How’s Lording?”

He humored her change of subject. “I haven’t got a taste for it yet, but it doesn’t seem so different from smithing. More meetings wearing fancier clothes. More decisions. Fewer things I’m allowed to hit. Better beds to sleep in.”

She eyed him sideways. A genuine smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. This was all so…familiar. He abruptly stopped walking and frowned. She stopped too; he’d taken hold of her wrist. “What is this, Arya? Why did you want to see me?” He looked…expectant. She stiffened. It was time.

“When I met you,” she began, but paused and lapsed into the speech patterns of the Faceless Men, to give herself some distance. “When a girl met a boy, she’d lost her father, killed a lad, and been made over into someone else. A girl had no one and a boy was…there. A boy about the same age as a girl’s older brothers. A girl trusted her brothers. A girl missed her brothers.” Gendry leaned back against one of the nearby alley walls, crossing his arms over his chest, considering her words. After a moment, he nodded as if to say, “I’m following. Go on.”

One hand resting on Needle’s hilt, she continued, “A boy was in danger. A girl cobbled a story together from fragments on the ground faster than a boy. A girl saved a boy’s life with a lie. A girl thought herself discharged. A girl was not. A boy knew who a girl was. A boy made a girl feel seen. A boy had power. A boy was blunt and strong and honest and likely to end up dead. A girl guarded him as she guarded her own secret locked inside him.” She risked glancing up at him again. His brow had furrowed but his gaze remained steady.

She rushed on, looking straight into his eyes now, the stilted pattern of her speech falling away, “When a boy said he was staying with the false Brotherhood…he broke her apart. A girl had made him her family and he hadn’t understood.”

Gendry had stepped away from the wall, sorrow written across his face. “Arya, I—,” he moved to embrace her. She held up a hand to stop him and he froze.

“A boy thought freedom a prison and nobility a gift. A girl knew nobility to be the prison and--much later--found freedom the gift.”

“So we’ve been at cross-purposes,” Gendry began, “not at the same place at the same time. That doesn’t mean...”

“I couldn’t name what brought me back to watch you smith all those times at Harrenhal. I can now. When I saw you again at Winterfell, after all those years apart, I wanted you in a way that wasn’t family. In a way I haven’t ever wanted anyone else, ever. It felt good to be touched and held and rocked and stretched. To be filled with you. But then, after…,” her voice trailed away. She looked down. Tears had begun to form in the corners of her eyes. She swallowed. This was the part she’d dreaded. It would burn everything between them to the ground with dragons and wildfire. She wasn’t certain she had enough ice in her veins to do it.

He’d stepped closer to her. Protectively, he bent down, placing his forearms on her shoulders and cradling her neck in his strong hands, encouraging her eyes to meet his. He looked at her with such unswervingly gentle intensity. It was the same look he’d worn when she’d revealed her scars to him that night. “Why did you push me away? Tell me,” he demanded, his voice husky and low.

“I wanted that night with you. You were tender and strong, generous and kind. We were alive together in the face of death. But in the same moment I claimed it, I knew that I couldn’t do it again. It was too much. Being filled up…it’s an…uncomfortable feeling for someone who has been empty as long as I have. I can’t be made whole by another person. And, when you looked up at me…during…” her face flushed, remembering his reverence as she’d mounted him, “I could tell that I’d opened a door inside you that I had never intended to open. No matter how much I might wish, for your sake, and our friendship, that I could…,” she trailed off. His arms had fallen to his sides. He was retreating. As she resumed, a wry note crept into her voice, “If either of us had died like we expected, we would never have needed to have this conversation.”

“Why, in the name of all the gods, are we having it now?” he asked, his dejection palpable in the air between them. “You were plain enough when you refused to wed me.”

In the silence that followed, she took him by the hand and dragged his reluctant feet the last few steps past the curtain walls to the wharf side. The sound of the waves was soothing.

“I’m leaving Westeros,” she said, pointing to a ship with a grey direwolf sigil several moorings away.

He stood beside her, staring at the moonlit outline of the ship. She hadn’t let go of his hand. She thought he might disintegrate if she pulled away.

“Gendry? I need you to hear me.”

He nodded his head.

“Look at me?” she requested quietly.

He shifted, taking a firmer stance beside her, and a deep breath in through his nose. He settled his shoulders and turned to her, blowing that breath away and squeezing the hand she still held. It meant, “I’m ready. Go on.”

She took his other hand firmly in hers. “The day King Robert arrived at Winterfell,” she said, “the first thing he did—the very first thing--was ask my father to take him down to the crypts to visit my aunt. He paid homage to her as if she were an effigy of the Maiden.” Her grey eyes met his blue ones frankly, “Be a better Baratheon lord than he was. Don’t waste your life pining for a woman who isn’t there.”

Raising his eyes to the night sky, Gendry swallowed, and the sad ghost of a smile passed over his face, “I’m already a better Baratheon lord than he was. Your aunt didn’t want my father because she was in love with someone else. You’re not in love with someone else. You love me. Or at least…you love me enough to make me understand that you need more than I can give you. Don’t worry. I’m not going to start a war and beget a legion of bastards because I’m miserable and can’t have what I want.”

She opened her mouth to speak again.

“My turn,” he commanded.

She closed her mouth.

He continued, “You’re going away. You may never return. The only thing left to want, after all you’ve said tonight, is no misunderstandings or hard feelings between us to regret in the years ahead. We’ve already had everything that we could have had with each other.”

He seemed to be asking her for confirmation. She could give him that. Nodding, she murmured, “You made me feel life and want to survive. No one else could have done that.”

Relief washed over Gendry followed by a new air of self-possession at her words. “Be safe, Arya,“ he said. “Be safe and happy. And if you ever do come back someday, tell me about it.”

“You mean it?”

“I mean it,” he said, nodding towards her with a soft smile, “milady.” He pressed a kiss onto the top of her hand. Turning away, he threaded his way back into the streets of King’s Landing. Arya watched him until he disappeared.

The next morning, as she gazed at the receding shores of Westeros, she found a new refrain forming unbidden on her lips:

_The Climbing King. The Ranger. The Queen of the North. The Smith._

People. Living people. Her people. People who wanted her to be happy and return someday. She smiled to herself, turning away from the shore and towards the infinite ocean horizon.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't expect this to be a popular fic. I can't say that I particularly enjoyed writing it. But as I was writing my first fic Arya's voice kept switching suddenly into this one so I knew I had to get it out of me. Inspired (a little) by the scene between Jon and the wildling warg Orell where he says, "She understands the way things are. People work together when it suits them. They're loyal when it suits them. The love each other when it suits them. And they kill each other when it suits them. She knows it. You don't. That's why you'll never hold on to her."


End file.
